irrefutable bottom line about picture ID's

Andrew Gideon wrote in message gonline.com...
Roger Long wrote:

Now see my post above. The Republican spin doctors would jump on me and
say, "See, he's a flip flopper. First he says one thing, then he says
another. Disregard everything he says."

That's a pretty good example.

I watched Kerry try to explain his take on the Iraqi war, and I think he's
in deep trouble.

First he says we shouldn't be there, then he says we should be ready
to react, then he says we should be proactive, then he says he would
have sent troops there, then he says we need more troops. Talk about
your House of Pancakes candidate.

-Robert

In article ,
"Roger Long" wrote:

The real political divide is no longer between liberal and conservative.
It's between thinking and not thinking. One view of the world holds that
you assemble all the facts, discard the ones that are not consistent with
your ideology and preconceptions, and then use what is left over to develop
a policy. The other approach is to assemble all the facts, sort them for
consistency, assemble the best planning model possible from them, and then
develop a policy. The problem with the latter is it takes longer and
requires a lot more leadership. This isn't a Republican vs. Democrat issue.
Neither party has a monopoly on either wisdom or stupidity. Bush however,
has surrounded himself entirely (except perhaps for Colin Powell) with the
former kind of thinkers.


Very well said, and very true (and I'm no great Kerry supporter -- not
yet, anyway).

Re the Bush admin in particular, for a while one might have cited Paul
O'Neill, and maybe Christie Whitman, along with Colin Powell. Having
just finished reading "The Price of Loyalty" by Ron Suskind, the book
about O'Neill's career as Secretary of the Treasury, I'd recommend it as
a very informative casebook on the above theme, as well as a very
entertaining read, regardless of your politics. (O'Neill voted for Bush
and says at the end he probably would again).

Notable quote from p. 114:

"O'Neill knew that Whitman had never heard the President
analyze acomplex issue, parse opposing positions, and settle
on a judicious path. In fact, no one -- inside or outside the
government, here or across the globe -- had heard him do
that to any significant degree. And that, O'Neill decided,
was what Whitman was getting at with the word "credibility."
It was not just the President's credibility around the world.
It was credibility with his most senior officials."

The really serious concern is that the Rove/Cheney/Karen Hughes axis
doesn't just "discard" facts they don't like, they actively suppress
them -- and then lie about them. Bush himself doesn't necessarily do
the same. Concepts like "facts" or "thinking" or "parse intelligently
arrayed opposing positions" just aren't terms relevant to his mental
processes.

"Roger Long" wrote in message
...


The real political divide is no longer between liberal and conservative.
It's between thinking and not thinking. One view of the world holds that
you assemble all the facts, discard the ones that are not consistent with
your ideology and preconceptions, and then use what is left over to
develop
a policy. The other approach is to assemble all the facts, sort them for
consistency, assemble the best planning model possible from them, and then
develop a policy.

Roger,

Intellectuals from the 20s through perhaps to the 50s believed
overwhelmingly that communism had to ultimately succeed because it was far
more scientific, rational, and well-planned than capitalism's free-for-all.
Surely a government of engineers would defeat a government of mere
politicians! Hayek was considered a crackpot in his own time for questioning
this, while Whittaker Chambers said he felt that he was switching from the
winning side to the losing one.

I'm not trying to make a point about communism per se, but rather to point
out that the sort of triumphal rationalism you express is in fact an old
idea, and one largely discredited by history. People and systems are
motivated by forces too numerous to compute the solutions of. It makes the
three-body problem look like kindergarten arithmetic.

Knowing which data to leave in, which data to leave out, and how to
interpret those things which do not conform to theoretical projections is
not the sideshow, it's the main event. Ideology is one of many anvils we can
beat the ore of raw analysis against to extract useful knowledge.

Just to give one example, I personally believe many liberals, particularly
in Western Europe, are at a loss to comprehend the nature of Islamic
terrorism because they have become so secularized that the deep religiosity
of OBL et. al. is simply unimaginable to them. Thus they become enamored of
the idea that we can negotiate on "rational" grounds, which is to say what
seems rational to them. Whereas conservatives, many of whom these days have
an element of apocalyptical evangelism in them, understand quite
instinctively that Bin Laden, the ayatollahs, etc. are talking about Heaven
and Hell, and there is no negotiating those things. Of course, I think good
counterclaims can be made here within the US regarding many social and
racial issues, where the Left has often preceeded the Right in identifying
the persistent gap in black versus white social progress as having roots
deeper than simple economics.

So my point is not necessarily to endorse one ideology but to dispute your
claim that ideology is obsolete. It is not now nor will it ever be.

Best,
-cwk.

I actually agree 100% that pilots should have photo ID's [...]
for protection of our aircraft and avionics.


How would this work?

Jose


--
(for Email, make the obvious changes in my address)

Roger Long wrote:

I actually agree 100% that pilots should have photo ID's. It's taking it
out of the homeland security pot and calling it an anti-terrorist measure
that is silly. We should have had them years ago. It's for protection of
our aircraft and avionics, not the homeland.

I guess if some terrorist steals an airplane and flies it on a suicide mission
we can arrest him for not having a picture ID....

Here's another scenario that makes the picture ID seem REALLY worthless::

Some foreigner comes here on a mission (his own mission from "allah"), gets
a legit Visa, is fully checked out, plays by all the rules, goes to flight school,
gets his license with a nice little picture on it. Waits patiently and follows
all the rules then after he has his nice pictureID pilot license goes on his
terror flight with a rented airplane.

But... he had a valid picture ID! I don't know about you but I feel safer...

"kontiki" wrote in message
...
Roger Long wrote:

I actually agree 100% that pilots should have photo ID's. It's taking
it
out of the homeland security pot and calling it an anti-terrorist
measure
that is silly. We should have had them years ago. It's for protection
of
our aircraft and avionics, not the homeland.

I guess if some terrorist steals an airplane and flies it on a suicide
mission
we can arrest him for not having a picture ID....

Here's another scenario that makes the picture ID seem REALLY worthless::

Some foreigner comes here on a mission (his own mission from "allah"),
gets
a legit Visa, is fully checked out, plays by all the rules, goes to flight
school,
gets his license with a nice little picture on it. Waits patiently and
follows
all the rules then after he has his nice pictureID pilot license goes on
his
terror flight with a rented airplane.

But... he had a valid picture ID! I don't know about you but I feel
safer...



Picture IDs do 2 things:

1. They make it more convenient for you, the pilot. You can identify
yourself more easily when renting, or when crossing a controlled gate to get
to your plane, and stuff like that. If you are a pilot with a "mission",
well...., it will be more convenient.

2. They make it somewhat more difficult to operate on a borrowed or purely
stolen licence. This might make it harder for the odd failed-medical to get
in the air. It might also subvert that very rare joyrider/terrorist who
wants to steal a plane by openly walking onto the ramp without real
credentials.

As you have stated, I am sure that any serious terrorist will have those
bases covered.

But you guys really should listen to yourselves once in a while:

"Some foreigner comes here on a mission....". No-where is it carved in
stone that a terrorist has to be foreign... as in McVeigh, for example. The
current voter-apathy is some western societies might be a serious symptom
that a significant segment of the population no longer gives a real damn
about their country. (Hell, it can be argued that some significant number
of corporations don't give a real damn for their country, either, but I
digress.) Of that segment, some tiny deranged portion may harbour real
enmity.

Some are caught in the 8th grade:

http://kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=2343204

I expect that many are not.

Icebound wrote:
"Some foreigner comes here on a mission....". No-where is it carved in
stone that a terrorist has to be foreign... as in McVeigh, for example.
Exactly. Foreigner or no foreigner a picture ID does nothing to stop someone
bound and determined to commit mayhem or harm others. Laws are effective only
for the law-abiding. Criminals, by definition, do not obey laws. But what the heck,
if a little more inconvenience and the addition of a "renewal fee" makes
us all feel safer its worth it I guess... sigh

The
current voter-apathy is some western societies might be a serious symptom
that a significant segment of the population no longer gives a real damn
about their country. (Hell, it can be argued that some significant number
of corporations don't give a real damn for their country, either, but I
digress.) Of that segment, some tiny deranged portion may harbour real
enmity.

It is not the responsibility of Corporations to "give a real damn for their country".
Their responsibility is to their stockholders... those who have paid money for shares
and expect them to be successful and not to lose money. Only individual citizens are
capable of "giving a damn". It could be argued that those who actually pay taxes in
this country are shareholders in a similar sense.

Some are caught in the 8th grade:

http://kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=2343204

I expect that many are not.

"Icebound" wrote in message
t.cable.rogers.com...

The
current voter-apathy is some western societies might be a serious symptom
that a significant segment of the population no longer gives a real damn
about their country.

Or it could be a measure that they don't need to give a damn. Hear me out:
if you lived in Iraq under Saddam, Romania unde Ceaucescu, etc. you needed
to pay *very* careful attention to "politics" because it was a life-or-death
issue, and it seeped into every aspect of your daily life, too. Want a
better apartment, job, anything, all of life was controlled by government.
Apathy meant death or deprivation.

Here in the US, you can live an entire upper middle-class life and unless
you have a run-in with the local school committee or zoning board, never
really care who's in control.

I'm not saying this is the *intelligent* choice, but given that the history
of mankind is largely that of tyrants and kings, this is something of an
achievement.

digress.) Of that segment, some tiny deranged portion may harbour real
enmity.


Statistical aberration. No question we have our share of homegrown wack
jobs, guys who shoot up abortion clinics, apocalyptic visionaries in Texas,
etc. But no one proposed baggage screening to get on my Cessna when that's
all it was. Not to be ignored but they are not the primary problem today, or
even the secondary one.

Best,
-cwk.

Icebound wrote:

Picture IDs do 2 things:
......

They do three things. In addition to those you mentioned, they effectively remove
more money from your wallet. The NJ driver's license is now $24. A passport is $55.

George Patterson
If a man gets into a fight 3,000 miles away from home, he *had* to have
been looking for it.

On Fri, 24 Sep 2004 20:25:32 GMT, Icebound wrote:

"Some foreigner comes here on a mission....". No-where is it carved in
stone that a terrorist has to be foreign... as in McVeigh, for example.


Letting aside all the terrorist talk and more 'security':
can somebody come up with some numbers on how many foreigners come to the
USA only for flight training and what impact on this (avitaion) industry
they have?
and what alltogether impact on economy they have (they need housing, food,
car rental, ...)? Are there some areas/FBOs that are heavily dependant on
foreign pilots (like Florida or around Wichita) and the money they bring to
the country?

#m

--
The more one is absorbed in fighting Evil,
the less one is tempted to place the Good
in question. (J.P. Sartre)